Haraket @ Valerio Muscella, October 20th 18h30

Preliminary talk by artist 20th of october at 18h30.Opening 20th of October at 19h30.Exhibition from October 19th to November 19th.

A project by Valerio Muscella Curated by Laura Carnemolla

Haraket (IPA: haɾe’cet; Type: noun) = movement, intended both as physical displacement and freedom of thought.
Turkey currently hosts over three million refugees, mostly coming from Syria. They live in temporary accommodations, abandoned houses and makeshift camps, hoping to embark for Greece one day to reach Northern Europe.

But as months and months go by, integration becomes an illusion, language, a barrier. For men, it is almost impossible to find a legal job. Women care for young children and the house. Denied the right to study, older children become easy targets for exploitation. They end up working anywhere from 8 to 12 hours a day, six days for week, sewing buttons and zippers, cutting fabrics and edges in abandoned buildings without toilets, safety or security regulations. They make 15 euros a day. They are between eight and sixteen years of age.

Of the Syrian refugees living in Turkey, 960.000 are school-age children, in 2016/17 524.000 were enrolled in formal education at the primary and secondary level. More than 400.000 Syrian refugee children living in Turkey are not attending school.

The government adopted an important policy in September 2014 that formally grants Syrian children access to public schools, but for many Syrian families practical obstacles remain. Many Syrian children are unable to attend Turkish public schools because of the language barrier and lack of Turkish language support for non-native speakers. Others face bullying and social integration difficulties that lead students to drop out or that discourage them from enrolling. Some Syrian families lack accurate information on enrolment procedures.

In Turkey child labor is not a secret years, 18 for dangerous jobs. An UN report in 2015 also specifies that in Turkey works 5.9 % of children between 5 and 14, despite the law prohibiting child labor up to 15 In December 2015, the complaint of the NGO Business and Human Rights Resources about Turkish suppliers to various apparel brands (among others: Burberry, Adidas, Marks & Spencer) to take action against the child labor. However, only H&M and Next responded to the questionnaire: both marks revealed that they had identified minors in their Turkish factories.